A spectacular launch from the jungle sends the Spanish satellite CHEOPS to unravel the mystery of the exoplanets

• Science: The mission of CHEOPS, the space spy who will look for extrasolar worlds at 27,000 kilometers per hour
• In French Guiana, they are launching CHEOPS
• European mission: a 'low cost' planet hunter

Against the horizontal clouds of mosquitoes, a vertical ingenuity full of fuel and the future has just left Earth. A Soyuz rocket, 46 meters high and 312 tons in weight, has been traveling to the Earth's orbit for a few minutes to leave the planet's unsettling gravitational force there for years, a satellite that for three years and without a second rest he will rummage in the guts of the exoplanets at 27,000 kilometers per hour.

Its take off, initially scheduled for Tuesday at 9.54 am, was postponed one day due to a technical problem in the rocket but CHEOPS, the acronym for the European Space Agency, is already traveling into the dark to point in the direction of starlight so distant that they question our understanding, incandescent stars in light years of the Earth and impossible, for now, to reach in less than hundreds of thousands of years. But stars that, after all, host planets who knows whether of gas, ice, water or rocks or extrasolar worlds with or without an atmosphere that will help to know where everything comes from and what is everything.

As I said enthusiastically on Monday afternoon at the foot of the rocket and its immense moat Ignasi Ribas, "CHEOPS puts us in the pure state of human curiosity; it is to understand what surrounds us and to know if we are singular ... or not" .

- We're alone?

- I hope not; It would be very boring. Science has been giving us successive cures of humility. We are not so important in the Universe.

- Maybe we're not just looking at us ...

-Yes, hopefully they are looking at us. And don't be too disappointed in our abilities. For now, with CHEOPS we can find a pattern in the Nature of exoplanets, something we do not know. Because Nature is very skilled at creating experiments that surprise us. And CHEOPS will help to understand.

The director of the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia and researcher of exoplanets in the CSIC did not want to hide his emotion. I could almost touch the base of the Russian rocket that one day after its own delay would impress the overwhelmed protagonists of Kurú, the city of French Guiana where the roar of this flying mass is still heard, a red wake crossing the sky Black of the jungle towards the roof without a roof of the Earth.

The storms of the last days and, above all, the fear of high winds caused the launch to be jeopardized. . But it was a power failure detected in the countdown that on Tuesday postponed the excitement until Wednesday.

Because today, at last, everything has alienated in this corner of the Latin American jungle still colonized by France so that CHEOPS premieres the intimate espionage of our cosmic neighborhood.

Scientists and journalists have crossed the city in the direction of two observation points. One installed in the control and press center, about twenty kilometers from the rocket. Another nestled in the tropical forest and in the limit of safety distance allowed , six kilometers from Soyuz.

The first one is called Jupiter.

The second hummingbird.

Overseen by the military of this French portion of the cast of the world, those who opted for the place closest to the launch have had to pass numerous filters and security controls that included metal detectors and records in the backpacks.

Hummingbird is a bite to the jungle. Among the tropical vegetation you can see a carp and a kind of 'corridor' that allows you to see a piece of horizon with a rocket end. Here, in this surreal Hummingbird, a handful of witnesses have made their particular launch sequence. And stacked with order, they were waiting for a turn that has not reached the ancient masks we would have had to put on quickly if there had been problems with the explosive giant.

The rocket clock has advanced discussing at the time, that curious form of space to go forward counting backwards, until finally the structure that protected the Soyuz has been opened, the spotlights have illuminated that aerodynamic mass and everything has started from true.

And so...

A hot and orange shot without victims has risen from the tropics towards the early morning altitude. We have seen the rise and roar of the Soyuz, with its evocative name of Soviet missions and its noise of science in motion.

And a moment of amazement has pinched the space envoys of this invention, as when friends agree to be overwhelmed.

The rocket has fled the earth leaving aside the sea and the island of the devil, attached to Koru and where thousands of prisoners endured - or not - infamous conditions of seclusion and characters such as Deyfrus or Papillon went down in history.

The rocket is expected to release the satellite two and a half hours after this takeoff. Afterwards, CHEOPS will begin to live alone, operated by the Spanish and Swiss control engineering companies, which have led the contraption. Everyone, including ESA technical surgeons , Airbus and other public and private institutions, has burst into applause as they observe the rocket's stab rising against the sky.

For example, David Barrado, researcher and scientific director of the María de Maeztu Unit of the Astrobiology Center of INTA CSIC. "If the 1930s were the golden age of quantum physics, now it is time for exoplanets, because we are already able to explore them. It is a fascinating adventure, it is like surfing the great wave of the ocean of discoveries. Science is finding phenomena not expected. And although CHEOPS is not a search mission, we may find extrasolar satellites or even exoplanets that have rings, like Saturn. "

There is still a satisfied smell of moisture and heat here, because in the Earth's exoplanet those things can be touched.

Like space mosquitoes in the jungle.

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